The Sacred Sin – Virtual Latino Book Tour #1

Queer Latino Musings on Literature is proud to be participating in the first ever “Virtual Latino Book Tour”, which is debuting on the blogosphere with the very talented Puerto Rican-American writer Estevan Vega. Estevan, who is an impressive twenty years old and has already published a few books, will be available for questions, etc, right here on this blog page, via the “Comments” section, on Thursday, June 25^th. So if you have things you’d like to ask him, fire away! Here is his artist statement and an excerpt from his latest book, The Sacred Sin.

 

Hello, world,

 

My name is Estevan Vega. I’m a writer. That’s usually all I like to tell people. That and that I’m not crazy about speaking in front of people, or really attractive girls. Scratch that…any girl. Some of you might have heard of me, but most of you probably haven’t. Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. But, if you care to know, I write fiction, and have a tendency to be very transparent. So, here it goes.

 

As a kid, I would have told you that reading books was the farthest thing from entertainment. I never really appreciated the written word and absolutely hated books…until the fifth grade, when I realized I might actually have to like them if I were going to start contributing to the collection. From small short stories and fictional essays for school, I began to take a liking to darker, supernatural elements, and have since enjoyed incorporating them into each story. As the second of four sons, sometimes I felt like the “monkey in the middle.” I liked to write when my brothers couldn’t stand to read. Rock music constantly poured out of my speakers, while they took a liking to rap and hip-hop. Oh, did I mention I was chubby? Needless to say, I felt somewhat out of place at times, even in my own house. But, I can’t say I’m fully bitter, because it gave me some good writing material, personal experience, and pent-up aggression, which occasionally breathes out of the more cynical characters I create, like Jude Foster in The Sacred Sin.

 

Publishing a book is no easy feat. I learned that firsthand as a sophomore in high school, when I published Servant of the Realm. My first literary venture was a sci-fi thriller about a teen who steals a corrupting serum which allows him to see the deaths of those closest to him. He spends much of the novel trying to change their fates and gets addicted to these horrible circumstances. The Sacred Sin, my second novel, was released when I was 18, and deals with a deeper subject: the darkness within all of us. It’s about struggling with the demons surrounding us—literal and figurative—as well as warring against the inner demons urging us to do the darkest things.

 

I have lived in Connecticut all my life, moving to and from various cities, but never fully escaping. I now reside in a small town called Portland, but have spent the last year up by Boston at Gordon College.

 

And now, here’s a taste of The Sacred Sin.

 

It felt so real again, like he was living it over, only this time he could rewind it, fast-forward it, freeze it. Each time it grew more painful, truer. Engle Baker, the miserable soul whom the rest of the outside world knew as Morgan’s daddy, was still whispering that name to him now, so many years later. It was real, not just memory.

 

Morgan walked into the bathroom and shut the door. It was dark, the way things usually were in the Baker house. A fracture of light fought its way in through the bottom slit in the door, but the darkness was too great. He shuddered. Something was nudging up against his foot. At first, he became startled, but it was just the body of his father, the remains at least. At this point in time, the fleshy parts were completely unidentifiable, a gash where the throat used to be now decayed and bony so as to appear as though there never was one at all. The holes where each eyeball once was were hollow and black; Morgan hated it when people stared at him, most of all Engle. But he didn’t even mind the stench anymore. Incensed and afraid again, Morgan took out a blade and put it into his hand, feeling the blood drain from his body. But no matter how hard he squeezed, no matter how deep the wound, it kept closing up. He hated not being able to hurt himself, not able to kill the pain. He kept the blade tucked into the flesh of his palm for nearly five minutes. Tears swelled in his eyes, irate painful tears. Real tears. Morgan hadn’t cried in twenty years, but tonight—for a few moments—he remembered what it was like to be human.

 

Look for me on my first ever Virtual Blog Tour, and visit www.estevanvega.com for ordering info, my personal blog, and up-to-date news on the development of my latest novel Arson, releasing later this year.

 

Here are Estevan’s host blogs for his tour, courtesy of Julia Amante’s blog. These other blogs will be of interest to many Queer Latino Musings on Literature readers, too!

 

June 14
Eljumpingbean
http://authorslatino.com/wordpress
http://eljumpingbean.blogspot.com
Hilarious! Don’t miss it.

June 15
Latinitas Magazine
http://www.latinitasmagazine.org

June 16
The Art of Random Willynillyness.com
Carol in Carolina
http://theartofrandomwillynillyness.blogspot.com
http://caroincarolina.blogspot.com

June 17
Caridad Pineiro
http://www.caridad.com/

June 18
Writing to Insanity
http://www.locacrazywriter.blogspot.com

June 19
Julia Amante
http://www.juliaamante.comblogspot.com/

June 20
Musings
http://Nilkibenitez.blogspot.com

June 21
rafaelMarquez.me
http://www.rafaelmarquez.me

June 22
Latina Reader
http://blogs.qoobole.com/latina-reader

June 23
Café of Deams
http://cafeofdreams.blogspot.com/

June 24
Latino Pundit
http://www.latinopundit.com

June 25
Queer Latino Musings on Literature
http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/

June 26
Mama Latina Tips
http://www.mamalatinatips.com

June 27
Latino Book Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-6309-Latino-Books-Examiner

 

For those of you who are visting me for the first time, my name is Charlie Vázquez and I’m a Brooklyn-based gay writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican extraction. This blog functions alongside my book reviews and interviews with authors in AMBIENTE, the largest Latino LGBT culture e-zine www.ambiente.us. I also host a popular reading series in New York called PANIC!, which features different lineups of LGBT writers and others. I would like to thank Estevan Vega and Jo Ann Hernandez (organizer) for having me be a part of his tour and encourage you, if you don’t already subscribe to my blog, to register for my bimonthly newsletters, which feature interviews with Latino writers and book reviews on books of interest to Latinos, with an emphasis on our LGBT community (scroll down a bit). It’s time to increase the exchange of culture between the queer community and the community-at-large, in these changing times. 

 

Coming next time: An interview with John Stahle, the editor of Ganymede, a stylish and sexy men’s literature and art quartlery published in New York. www.ganymedenyc.com

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

 

 

Charlie Vázquez

writer, book reviewer, and PANIC! reading series host

 

Home page: http://www.firekingpress.com

Double Pride PANIC!, Dancing with the Devil and Virtual Latino Book Tour #1

Hello, pretty little doves!

Moving right into things—DOUBLE PRIDE PANIC! is coming up on Wednesday, June 24th, 8PM sharp. This event is free and 21+. NOWHERE is located at 322 E 14^th St (btwn 1^st/2^nd) and we’re hoping you can join us for a wonderful evening that will feature six queer writers of color. Come join Vince Bernard, Rosalind Lloyd, Ian Rafael Titus, Taylor Siluwé, Claudia Narvaez-Meza and Brandon Lacy Campos, for what surely will be a fierce reading of poetry and prose. I’m thrilled to be hosting.

 

I interviewed one of the aforementioned presenters, Taylor Siluwé, for the June 15^th issue of Ambiente, regarding his new book and what gets him “Dancing with the Devil”, which is the name of his fresh, new fiction collection. You can read that here www.ambiente.us. Ambiente also posted a book review I wrote for the hair-raising Tales of the City of Mexico (Lethe 2002). Both of these books are terrific!

On the radical news front: The Radical Homosexual Agenda contacted me recently, notifying me of their third-annual PARADE WITHOUT A PERMIT, which they’re holding at Washington Square Park, on Friday, June 19^th, 9PM. If this sounds interesting to you, check them out here:

radicalhomosexualagenda.org

Latina lesbian comedienne Marga Gomez is performing in NYC from Thursday, June 18^th through Sunday the 21^st at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater on W 47^th Street and 8^th Avenue. Her new show Long Island Iced Latina chronicles her Long Island childhood and is sure to be a bellyacher. Don’t miss her if you can help it—we’re going on Saturday night. Check Marga Gomez out here: http://www.margagomez.com/

Queer Latino Musings on Literature is proud to be participating in the first-ever “Latino Virtual Book Tour”, which is debuting on the blogosphere with the very talented Puerto Rican-American writer Estevan Vega. Estevan will be available for questions, etc, right here on this blog page via the Comments section, on June 25^th, all day. So if you have things you’d like to ask him, fire away! Here is his artist statement and an excerpt from his latest book, The Sacred Sin.

Hello, world,

My name is Estevan Vega. I’m a writer. That’s usually all I like to tell people. That and that I’m not crazy about speaking in front of people, or really attractive girls. Scratch that…any girl. Some of you might have heard of me, but most of you probably haven’t. Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. But, if you care to know, I write fiction, and have a tendency to be very transparent. So, here it goes.

As a kid, I would have told you that reading books was the farthest thing from entertainment. I never really appreciated the written word and absolutely hated books…until the fifth grade, when I realized I might actually have to like them if I were going to start contributing to the collection. From small short stories and fictional essays for school, I began to take a liking to darker, supernatural elements, and have since enjoyed incorporating them into each story. As the second of four sons, sometimes I felt like the “monkey in the middle.” I liked to write when my brothers couldn’t stand to read. Rock music constantly poured out of my speakers, while they took a liking to rap and hip-hop. Oh, did I mention I was chubby? Needless to say, I felt somewhat out of place at times, even in my own house. But, I can’t say I’m fully bitter, because it gave me some good writing material, personal experience, and pent-up aggression, which occasionally breathes out of the more cynical characters I create, like Jude Foster in The Sacred Sin.

Publishing a book is no easy feat. I learned that firsthand as a sophomore in high school, when I published Servant of the Realm. My first literary venture was a sci-fi thriller about a teen who steals a corrupting serum which allows him to see the deaths of those closest to him. He spends much of the novel trying to change their fates and gets addicted to these horrible circumstances. The Sacred Sin, my second novel, was released when I was 18, and deals with a deeper subject: the darkness within all of us. It’s about struggling with the demons surrounding us—literal and figurative—as well as warring against the inner demons urging us to do the darkest things.

I have lived in Connecticut all my life, moving to and from various cities, but never fully escaping. I now reside in a small town called Portland, but have spent the last year up by Boston at Gordon College.

And now, here’s a taste of The Sacred Sin.

It felt so real again, like he was living it over, only this time he could rewind it, fast-forward it, freeze it. Each time it grew more painful, truer. Engle Baker, the miserable soul whom the rest of the outside world knew as Morgan’s daddy, was still whispering that name to him now, so many years later. It was real, not just memory.

Morgan walked into the bathroom and shut the door. It was dark, the way things usually were in the Baker house. A fracture of light fought its way in through the bottom slit in the door, but the darkness was too great. He shuddered. Something was nudging up against his foot. At first, he became startled, but it was just the body of his father, the remains at least. At this point in time, the fleshy parts were completely unidentifiable, a gash where the throat used to be now decayed and bony so as to appear as though there never was one at all. The holes where each eyeball once was were hollow and black; Morgan hated it when people stared at him, most of all Engle. But he didn’t even mind the stench anymore. Incensed and afraid again, Morgan took out a blade and put it into his hand, feeling the blood drain from his body. But no matter how hard he squeezed, no matter how deep the wound, it kept closing up. He hated not being able to hurt himself, not able to kill the pain. He kept the blade tucked into the flesh of his palm for nearly five minutes. Tears swelled in his eyes, irate painful tears. Real tears. Morgan hadn’t cried in twenty years, but tonight—for a few moments—he remembered what it was like to be human.

Look for me in the coming weeks on my first ever Virtual Blog Tour, and visit www.estevanvega.com for ordering info, my personal blog, and up-to-date news on the development of my latest novel Arson, releasing later this year.

Thanks Estevan!

And thank you to all my wonderful readers!!!

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

xoxo Charlie Vázquez

Christ Like’s Emanuel Xavier on the Ballroom Days and More…

I met Emanuel Xavier shortly after moving back to my native New York City in 2006 and I’m constantly floored by his gentle and sincere demeanor, considering all the horrors he’s survived as a former hustler, drug dealer, and victim of sexual abuse. The charismatic and prolific Mr. Xavier has crafted the self-published poetry volume Pier Queen, the much-acclaimed Americano (Suspect Thoughts, 2002), edited the anthologies Bullets and Butterflies: queerspoken word poetry (Suspect Thoughts, 2005) and Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto, 2008)—as well as the titan erotica collection Best Gay Erotica 2008 (Cleis Press, 2007). Xavier is celebrating the ten-year anniversary reprinting of his 1999 breakthrough novel Christ Like (Rebel Satori 2009), a semi-autobiographical account of the myriad difficulties plaguing “Mikey X”, his literary doppelganger. Christ Like follows Mikey’s labyrinthine journey; from dealing with his teenage homosexuality to being introduced to the 1990s Manhattan “pier” and “ballroom” cultures—with all of their prickly side dishes of muscular heartthrobs, awkward heroes, plentiful drugs, endless sex and fierce, shady egos. Emanuel and I discussed Christ Like’s resurrection and what gets him going as a gay Latino writer.

 

CV: I wasn’t living in New York in the 1990s, but remember catching glimpses of your fierce, gay street warrior characters on my frequent trips back. What do you think was the allure of engaging in crime, for minority, inner-city queer kids? The 1990s are documented as being a time of economic expansion, but not for everyone, right?

 

EX: Growing up in a city like [1970s-1980s] New York exposes one to far more violence than say growing up in Beverly Hills. Developing thick skin is crucial for survival wherever you grow up, but for minority inner-city youth, options are sometimes limited, so crime has a natural appeal. Rebellion is in the air and queer youth are already supposedly going to hell. Throw in a broken childhood, a dash of prejudice, and the hustle and bustle of one of the most infamous cities of the world and self-destruction is quite seductive. The 1990s may have been a great economic time, but not for those
marginalized because of skin color or sexuality.

 

CV: I take it that the ballroom scene still exists to a degree? How involved are you and how different is it nowadays, as compared to the 1990s?

 

EX: The ballroom scene is very much still alive. Like any community, great leaders have passed away or moved on, but there’s always going to be someone ready to step into the limelight. It’s just different because there are more safe spaces, visible role models, and opportunities to communicate and create relationships for queer youth. There will always be, however, a need for support and self-expression. Trying to carve out a niche for myself as a writer does not, unfortunately, lend itself to being more actively involved in the ballroom scene. But I like to think that pursuing my dreams might inspire someone in the ballroom scene to recognize that there is more to life than simply winning a trophy for walking a runway.

 

CV: You mention (in the book’s introduction) your insecurity as a fledgling writer when putting Christ Like together ten years ago. How do you feel about it now? My theory is that a great storyteller is a great storyteller, period.

 

EX: I had no formal training or experience except for a self-published poetry collection. I was written off as a ‘flash in the pan’ and I’ve never had an agent to guide my career. I only had thick skin to survive the critics and convinced myself that this book was worth publication. Before some privileged white artist stepped in to exploit my life, I wanted to share my own experiences. They probably would have reaped more benefits than I ever would, but I do feel grateful to have been genuinely welcomed by the queer literary scene, let alone having gotten this book published. I think it’s incredible when you get the chance as a writer to revise something you put out in haste, because you were given a unique opportunity. I don’t think I changed it much, just tweaked it here and there, and I’m excited about giving it a second chance.

CV: Any advice for young, aspiring writers whose odds seem against them?

EX: (Laughs) I always get that question. Nobody wants to hear that you should just be passionate about your work because there is little-to-no money made from publishing for queer writers, especially of color. Unless you could be the next E. Lynn Harris or get your book optioned for film like Sapphire’s “Push”, it’s best to keep writing for the sake of documenting our histories and enjoy whatever comes from it without further expectations. The greatest reward is inspiring others to share their own voices. Anything else that comes along is that much more appreciated. I was supposed to end up a washed up pier queen, but I was just in Belgium for a queer literary kinship symposium! I suppose I could say that my life is a testament that anything is possible, no matter what limitations are imposed on you by others.
 

CV: So tell us what we can expect from Emanuel Xavier in the future.

 

EX: I have a new poetry collection coming out this fall and, if things work out, I might have other opportunities for reaching a wider audience. I’m still as ambitious now as I was when I first started. The only difference is that I no longer have to prove I could change my life around and that I am serious about becoming a writer.

Amen, hermano.

 

Christ Like can be purchased at the Rebel Satori store: www.rebelsatori.
com/shop

 

 

Photo by: © Shirley Miranda-Rodriguez, Somos Arte, 2009 www.somosarte.com

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Charlie Vázquez

www.firekingpress.com

Behind the Screen, HISPANIC PANIC! and Spittles the Clown at Dixon Place, NYC

It’s the Ides of May kittens and I have lots to share with you! First off, if you haven’t already heard (and if you even care) I’m dragging the clown out of the closet for a fifteen-minute spoken word performance at Dixon Place on Saturday May 30^th, 8PM. It’s part of an evening organized by Edwin Ramoran, titled “Lips Like My Sugar Walls”, and promises to be a wacko, multimedia evening of frisky New York City queerness. I will include the link to the Dixon Place site for you to peruse at your leisure should you want to. www.dixonplace.org

 

PRESS RELEASE FOR “LIPS LIKE MY SUGAR WALLS”

GUEST CURATOR: Edwin Ramoran

 

LIPS LIKE MY SUGAR WALLS promises an evening of world premieres by emerging artists working in New York City. As a curatorial concept “Lips Like My Sugar Walls” acknowledges the primacy of our outer layers, lips, foreskin, culo, mandala, epidermis, and labia. They propel us. We use them in so many ways. We spit, suck, sing, slurp, squirt, lick, fuck, eat, blow, flirt, and kiss. What can a post-punk, Prince-influenced mash up look, feel, sound, taste, smell like? Does it hurt, love, fear, accept? This performance showcase brings together a raw, innovative mix of New York artists. All are contemporary artists who use interdisciplinary practices to produce performative works in video, poetry, photography, and song.

 

The world premiere of Ivan Monforte’s short video “Tres Veces” reveals the artist and three other men in a racy interpretation of Paquita La Del Barrio’s ranchero song of revenge “Tres veces te engañé.” For the first time, Jayson Keeling collaborates on a slide show and text performance with the punk antics of Alison Ward and her rock group The Ruffian Arms. Bringing the immediacy of the edgy East Village scene, performance artists Karen Jaime and Charlie Vázquez, both dynamic writers and spoken word poets who recently performed for Hispanic PANIC! at the queer bar Nowhere, will deliver new works, including a rare performance by Vázquez as “Spittles the Clown”, a fetish, sex worker. Designer Imposter (aka Ramdasha Bikceem), known on the queer club circuit for her fierce mix of dance music at parties like Pantyho’s, will perform new original songs. Rachel Mason and Mark Golamco, who have worked together since 2003, will play a set of their experimental, collaborative music with viola accompaniment.

Here to buy tix: (Hot Shots) https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7094445;jsessionid=E35DA118CF3E75DC20363342F059785E

 

 

Secondly, a few nights before “Lips Like My Sugar Walls” is PANIC! at Nowhere, New York City’s only running monthly queer reading series hosted by yours truly. HISPANIC PANIC! will take a Latino/a focus for the Taurean month of May. Join me, Karen Jaime, Larry La Fountain, and fellow tauros Cristina Izaguirre, Charles Rice-González and Maegan ‘La Mamita Mala’ Ortiz for an evening of LGBT/feminist thrills and gropes. ¡Olé! This all-star lineup should not be missed! Wednesday May 27^th, 8PM, free, 21+, at Nowhere (322 E 14^th St, btwn 1^st/2^nd).

 

Fellow queer writer, performer and whistleblower Brandon Lacy Campos was so sweet to interview Spittles/me for his blog, My Feet Only Walk Forward, which he posted last night. I will let the interview speak for itself and Brandon will be one of the featured readers at DOUBLE PRIDE PANIC!, the June installation of Panic!, on Wednesday, June 24^th, 8PM, free, 21+. I had the pleasure of reading the manuscript for his upcoming poetry book, which I will also read over and review for Ambiente, the largest Latino LGBT culture e-zine.

See Brandon’s interview with Spittles here:

http://myfeetonlywalkforward.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-with-clown-charlie.html

 

 AMBIENTE: www.ambiente.us

 

This issue’s review:

 Behind the Screen | How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 (Viking, 2001) By William J. Mann

REVIEW by Charlie Vázquez

Q: Now who put the “tinsel” in Tinseltown?
A: Ask Glinda the Good Witch…

 

I don’t know how this book got past my sharp “book” nose, but somehow it did. There are times when I pick up a book, as I did with this one, and just cannot put it down. Behind the Screen will surely do the same for you—and I’m not a movie person, by any means. But, I love queer history. This book, with all of its layers of shady studio politics, art and craft history and thirsty egos, makes me want to revisit some of the movies discussed that queers wrote, directed, costumed, made up, designed, acted in, edited and scored, from the silent era through the turbulent 1960s.

Starting with boomtown Hollywood’s infancy, Behind the Screen unravels the development of the film industry and its transition from rough diamond to sophisticated pearl. And we “fairies” had much to do with this—as New Yorker sophisticate and theater set decorator George James Hopkins learned, when he was called to work in Tinseltown in 1916. He was apparently aghast at what was considered a set in those days. Queers were attracted to this new and exciting industry from day one, but as soon as “talkies” came about, muted queer caricatures became all to real “faggots”, and a long war, in varying degrees of oppression, was waged against the very people who helped elevate the business from crude to fabulous.

 
The names go on and on: Cary Grant, Dorothy Arzner, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Raymond Burr; Billie Burke who played Glinda in The Wizard of Oz—did you know she was a dyke? I didn’t. One fascinating surprise after the next kept me glued. When anything queer is at hand, irony is never far away: Mann even looks at how “deviant” men such as James Dean and Rock Hudson helped define “masculinity” for men the world over. The inquisitions of the McCarthy years was a maddening section (in terms of the cruelty doled out to gays) and Hollywood’s connection to the Mattachine Society and the development of the Los Angeles gay bar subculture come off the pages clear as day.

Latinos are alive and well in queer Golden Era Hollywood, too—beginning with the “effeminate” Mexican heartthrob Ramón Novarro and working forward to Cesar Romero—who although I knew was of Cuban heritage, was also the grandson of Cuban icon Jose Martí. Who knew? Although Romero was seen escorting stars such as Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck to gala events and restaurants, he often complained of being “alone” to the press and is alleged to have had an affair with Tyrone Power. Yet both Novarro and Romero came to define the (straight) Latin lover type—hmm, ok. It would be interesting for a Latino scholar to write a similar book on the closeted world of Spanish-language entertainment media, as many in the Spanish-speaking world prefer to watch Univision and Telemundo and go to see Spanish-language movies. Until then, William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen serves as a memorial to our unjust treatment and innate creative power—our uniqueness, that which makes our work stand out as the best. We need to remember that our enemies hate to be outshined.

 

 

Now go enjoy this spring!

 

Charlie Vázquez

Brooklyn, NY

 

 To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast in Bed and Spittles the Clown

I hope that all of you have been enjoying spring, wherever you are. The weather here in New York has been a little ‘schizo’ and I feel right at home. So some updates and reminders before I tell you about Lawrence Schimel’s latest Spanish poetry collection…

  

DANGER PANIC! was a wild, wild success—you boys really laid it on them! Such thunderous applause…I’ve come to the realization that PANIC! is the only ongoing monthly queer reading series in Gotham. Bluestockings hosts all kinds off wonderful one-offs and other venues host queer readings as well (the layers are endless), but I believe PANIC! is the only series right now (please correct me if I’m wrong). Dean Johnson’s Reading for Filth does occasional gatherings, but since his unfortunate passing and The Rapture’s folding a while back, their monthly output has been interrupted—so thanks for making PANIC! everything it’s becoming.

 

On May 27^th we’ll be presenting HISPANIC PANIC!, which I’m going to do three times a year—in January, May and September. This installation will feature Larry La Fountain, who’ll be joining us from the University of Michigan where he teaches, Maegan ‘La Mamita Mala’ Ortiz, Charles Rice-González, Karen Jaime, me, and Cristina Izaguirre, who’ll be joining us for the first time. Six Latino LGBT warriors armed with tales and poems of politics and pleasure—save the date (I will send out official announcements and releases as we get closer).

 

I’ll also be participating in an event being staged at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side. It’s part of the Hot Shots series that Earl Dax produces and which Eddie Ramoran is curating. On the night of May 30^th, I will be dragging Spittles the Clown, my alter ego, out of the closet, for a one-time spoken word performance. The piece is titled “Spittles the Clown on Making Money during HARD Times” and contains all kinds of subject matters you would rather not discuss with your mother—most of you anyway. Fellow Latina Karen Jaime is also on the bill, as are a bunch of other people I will tell you about on May 15th’s post.  

Okay…

 

Lawrence Schimel’s Desayuno en la cama

(Egales editorial, Madrid, Barcelona, 2008)

 

Madrid-based writer, poet and publisher Lawrence Schimel’s latest poetry collection Desayuno en la cama (en español) dazzles the eyes, heart and spirit with themes of love, desire, sex and infatuation. He is a true romantic—these poems are sensual, honest and at times even adorable. They capture the contemporary queer man’s longing for, what are often, opposing forces; companionship and freedom, simplicity and adventure. At times his voice worries that others might hear him in the midst of passionate sex; other times he dives into the carnal world of male sexuality with all the enthusiasm of a lusting virgin.

This brand of magical poetry serves as a testament to the complexities we experience as desiring queers and also serves as a crucial document of the rewards and heartbreaks we reap, as men who live our lives as we so deem to. “I have sex with other men,” he tells a man, “but breakfast in bed is ours alone”. Episodes of cyber-infatuations and long-distance yearning ring all too dear and true. Schimel’s fearless confessions of yearning for male beauty—the desire that marginalizes us—is the poetry’s driving force, the wind in its sails, the man he explores with ever-thirsting lips. Desayuno en la cama is a bold foray into queer Madrid noir and glows with the scent of love just made.

To order:
http://www.libreriaberkana.com/buscador.php?searchp=Desayuno%20en%20l
a%20cama

 

If any of you have book suggestions that I might want to review, please drop me a message at: firekingpress@yahoo.com

 

 

Xoxo

Charlie

www.firekingpress.com

 

This review also appears in Ambiente, a Miami-based LGBT Latino culture e-zine: www.ambiente.us

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Spring Cleaning and Ambiente

“Fresh, Fresh Y’all” photo by AB Lugo, April 2009

 

A big round of applause to all of you who’ve followed this blog since I launched it at the beginning of the year! You helped launch it onto the WordPress Top 100 and Growing Blogs lists more than a few times. And as much as I’ve enjoyed delivering my weekly weirdness to you, it’s time to change things—to move in a fresh direction. Alas, it’s spring.

 

 

 

Firstly, I’m not killing this blog, whatsoever. I’m restructuring it. I anticipate a busy season ahead and won’t have time for weekly deliveries. Herb Sosa of Ambiente (www.ambiente.us) offered me a slot on his Miami-based bimonthly LGBT journal, for reviewing books relating to the queer Latino experience. So I’m going to reformat Queer Latino Musings in accordance with this new collaboration. I’ll be posting book reviews and interviews with authors on the 1^st and 15^th of every month, in conjunction with his publishing schedule.

 

 

 

This makes it much easier on me. I’ll still be reporting on all the issues, culture and politics of what I read as it is and some of you may not stick with me. I throw you a kiss. Two kisses. Posting twice a month will not overburden your inboxes, so you may want to hang on and see what’s to come—as it shall be anything but mundane. Last month’s interview with Puerto Rican writer and scholar Larry La Fountain was the divining rod that set this into motion, so I’m continuing in this fashion until further notice.

 

 

 

Queer Latino Musings will be rechristened Queer Latino Musings on Literature as of this post, moving forward. Ambiente was kind enough to post two reviews I wrote recently, one of which editor Rafael Merino posted to NY Latino Journal (www.nylatinojournal.com), for the excellent read Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City (Markus Wiener, 2004). He’s also posted a short, praising review I concocted for Cuban writer Achy Obejas’s lovely new novel, Ruins (Akashic, 2008). You can read those here: www.ambiente.us

 

 

 

I will also continue to make announcements here for my queer PANIC! reading series held monthly at Nowhere in the East Village, NYC. The next reading is entitled DANGER PANIC! and will feature queer writer warlords Pietro Scorsone, Chadwick Moore, Matthew Johnson and a special guest, Velvet Mafia editor Sean Meriwether (www.velvetmafia.com). These writers will be presenting stories meant to bring on a PANIC! attack (drum roll, cymbal crash), so if you rock a pacemaker, please stay home for this one. Wednesday, April 29, 8PM sharp, free, 21+ only, please. Nowhere is located at 322 E 14^th St (btwn 1^st/2^nd).

 

 

 

May’s reading, HISPANIC PANIC! 2, will be featuring a knockout lineup of queer Latino literary talent. I jump up and down every time I think about it. More on that soon.

 

 

 

And if you think of anything you might like for me to review (fiction and non-fiction), never hesitate to email me at: firekingpress@yahoo.com

 

 

 

Besitos,

 

 

 

Charlie Vázquez

Brooklyn, NY

 

 

To receive my bimonthly posts straight to your email, register here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

Blue Fingernails: Queer Tales of Sin, Vampires and Pornography!

NY Latino Journal editor Rafael Merino published a review I sent him for the very excellent book Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City (Markus Wiener 2004), a must-read for anyone interested in Nuyorican history and all of its color and surprises. You can read that here: www.nylatinojournal.com

 

 

 

I’d like to thank Wigberto Astacio of Fordham University for coordinating a wonderful event that happened this past Tuesday evening at Fordham’s Bronx campus, a stone’s throw from the airspace in which I was born (the legendary Fordham Hospital, which once stood on the northwest corner of the Fordham Road/Southern Boulevard intersection). Queer Writers of Color and their Experiences gave our moderator Professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and the guests in attendance the chance to ask me, Karen Jaime, and Charles Rice-González questions about our life experience, ethnicity, queerness, etc, and how that informs our writing. Made for some very compelling discussion…thanks to everyone again. And speaking of queer Latino writers…

 

 

  

I first met Puerto Rican writer, scholar and performer Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (a.k.a. Larry La Fountain) last summer, at the New York City reading for Los Otros Cuerpos, the first ever anthology of queer Puerto Rican literature, published by Editorial Tiempo Nuevo in 2007. About five years ago, I came across one of Larry’s stories, “My Name, Multitudinous Mass”, in Bésame Mucho (Painted Leaf Press, 1999), a groundbreaking collection of gay male fiction edited by Jaime Manrique with Jesse Doris. “My Name, Multitudinous Mass” also appears in Larry’s newest fiction collection, Blue Fingernails/Uñas pintadas de azul, which was just published by Bilingual Press. Blue Fingernails is a crazy amusement park ride through Santerian house parties, grimy bedrooms, gothic theater productions and The Museum of Natural History and features vampires, horny lesbians, neo-Dominicans, well-endowed Cubans and a rather loveable character named Demonio María Cienfuegos (Demon Mary Hundred Fires).

 

 

 

Larry was in New York recently as part of a panel assembled by the Audre Lorde Project in Brooklyn, which focused on queer Caribbean politics and activism. He gave me a copy of Blue Fingernails/Uñas pintadas de azul and I tore through it, so zany, well-written and bizarre are these stories. It’s refreshing to read literature that reflects our animalistic fantasies and darkest obsessions, as if they’re immune to condemnation. In these stories queerness is the standard, not the exception—at last! This stock of fearless fiction carries on in the queer warlord tradition of Baldwin, Rechy, Genet, Burroughs and Lorca. Mister La Fountain is an assistant professor of Queer Caribbean, Latino/a Studies and Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies—at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor—and took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his new book(s). He will also be a guest reader at the upcoming HISPANIC PANIC! II reading on Wednesday, May 27^th (more on that to come soon).

 

 

 

Take a bow, Larry…

 

 

 

CV: So tell us a little about how these unusual stories came to be—they’re very different from one another and capture different moods, locations, obsessions, etc. Some, such as “Love is Intergalactic”, flirt with science-fiction and fantasy while others, such as “De un pájaro las dos alas” read as documentaries on personal experience. There is also some poetry.

 

 

 

LLFS: Yeah, they’re all over the place! They’re basically about me, or characters that sort of seem like me—gay, Puerto Rican, sex-crazed, lonely, idealist, mostly in New York City and New Jersey but also in other parts, with painted blue fingernails! They’re also about my gay and lesbian friends, and about the authors I like to read. I started writing them sporadically throughout the nineties, and they became a book after I took a creative writing class with Diamela Eltit at Columbia University in 1997. Angel Lozada was also in that workshop, and we became comrades in arms. Angel then went on to publish La patografía and No quiero quedarme sola y vacía, two landmark queer Puerto Rican novels.

 

 

 

I had been showing my stories over the years to Mayra Santos-Febres, a wonderful Puerto Rican author, and she was very supportive; she’s the one who kept insisting that I had to publish them. Basically, the stories were a different way for me to process my life—different, say, than what I write in my diaries. And the most amazing part was realizing that I did not have to limit myself to my experiences, that I could break through the straightjacket of autobiography and take a free flight of the imagination! That was really transformative. That’s how all the crazy cyborgs and vampires started to appear.

 

 

 

CV: What’s up with the vampires? Does it have anything to do with growing up in Puerto Rico where bats are plentiful? Or are vampires the ultimate archetype for dark sensuality and tribal taboo in your work? Are you reinterpreting classic Hollywood imagery and pop culture?

 

 

 

LLFS: Yes! Those are all good interpretations. We had fruit trees growing outside—nísperos and mangoes, especially—and the bats just loved them! And my mom kept insisting that they were pigeons! They only flew at dusk and you couldn’t really make them out. I think my mom was afraid they would get caught in our hair. But you know what, bats eat mosquitoes! Which is really good—there’s too many mosquitoes in Puerto Rico!

 

 

 

You’re also right that it has to do with sexuality and desire. I am really fascinated by winged, flying creatures: angels, demons, vampires. I thought, “What would happen if you had a lonely, horny drag queen who was also an angel and a vampire and a demon, all four things at the same time, making a gay porn film with Chi Chi LaRue?” That’s how “Rites of Devotion to the Cult” came about. Or rather, that’s how a boring story of going to sex clubs in the meatpacking district of Manhattan became something more interesting… (laughs)

 

 

 

CV: You noted in the introduction that the stories were written in New York and New Jersey during the 1990s, yet they’re set all over the world and shift locations with the speed of Web-pages. Do you write when you travel or take notes and how does traveling and the internet factor into your prose?

 

 

 

LLFS: I tend to keep diaries when I travel, or to write right after I get back. In the case of “A Black Cat Called Malícia,” it’s actually a science-fiction story based on the time I spent in Brazil in the late eighties. I left my diary there by mistake and my former housemates never sent it to me, which was quite traumatic. Brazil was pretty intense—São Paulo is a city of 20 million, and I was 20 years old and had just come out of the closet a year before, and the university I was going to went on strike for three months! And the cops were beating the students! And there was hyperinflation, and there were homeless children everywhere, and everyone was obsessed with Blade Runner and kept talking about cyborgs! Writing fiction became a way to recreate (and distort) what I had lived before I forgot.

 

 

 

“De un pájaro las dos alas,” on the other hand, was my reaction to a trip to Cuba in May of 1998. I came back pretty shell-shocked—Cuba was nothing like what I expected. Everyone thought I was there for sex tourism. I was a broke grad student attending a theater conference! And American credit cards were no good! And there were no ATMs! I wanted to learn about gay life and socialist utopias and they wanted me to pay their neighbors and brothers and friends to go to bed. Talk about bursting my bubble… The rest of the stories are mostly set in NY/NJ and in Puerto Rico, which were my usual haunts back then, before I moved to Michigan.

 

 

 

I first started going online in 1995. At first it was just e-mail, and then my friend Marcial taught me how to use the IRC (Internet Relay Chat). We would make up different crazy drag queen names every time we went on! I don’t really think about the Internet too much, conceptually, that is—it just became a very integral part of my life, and that’s how it made it into the book. I think that, more than about the Internet, my writing is about latching onto an uncensored flow of consciousness. It’s about free-associations and about tapping into my unconscious and letting it all come out, unfiltered, sort of as if I were in a trance or altered state. That’s where all the connections get made. That’s why the writing can be a little hard to understand and might seem experimental. Editing helps me calm the wildest impulses and make it more accessible.

 

 

 

CV: Your stories are fearlessly queer. You bring up everything from extreme sexual fetishes to very visual lesbian pornography. Do you think general readers are in a more accepting position to explore this kind of literature nowadays, or do you think that the people who would buy your books are already tempered for such subjects?

 

 

 

LLFS: That’s funny! I think I’m crazy. This book was rejected by thirty presses before Bilingual picked it up. I was pretty convinced it was never going to come out. And remember—I wrote most of the stories in Spanish! The English translations came later. I wrote the stories for myself and for the few friends I would share them with. Most of my friends don’t like what I write. But you know what, that’s OK! You can still be my friend even if you don’t like my crazy stories! I think if I had worried about readers (or about my professional aspirations) I would have never written them, and certainly not published them! But yeah, definitely, I think there are some people who like stuff like this! That’s why I have a “disclaimer” of sorts on the back cover. I don’t want people buying the book by mistake and then freaking out when they start to read it!

 

 

 

CV: You have another book coming out this summer, which I’m really looking forward to reading also. Will you tell us a little about that?

 

 

 

LLFS: Sure! It’s called Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora, and it’s about Puerto Rican queer migration and culture. It’s being published by the University of Minnesota Press. I focus on how artists and writers and filmmakers such as Manuel Ramos Otero, Luz María Umpierre, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Rose Troche and Erika López have discussed their experiences as queer Puerto Ricans in the United States in their short stories, poetry, cartoons, and films. I also have a chapter on Arthur Avilés and Elizabeth Marrero in the Bronx, and how they take classic stories like Cinderella and The Wizard of Oz and turn them into queer Nuyorican and New York-Rican stories in their performances, for example in Arturella and in Maéva de Oz. Basically, the central premise of the book is that LGBT people have been migrating from Puerto Rico to the U.S. for several decades because of their sexuality, and that once they arrive here (or are born here, if they are the children of immigrants), their sexuality is a factor that affects their lives. It’s going to be the first book of its kind. I’m really excited to see it come out!

 

 

 

CV: Thanks Larry!

 

 

 

LLFS: You’re welcome! Thanks for the great questions!

 

 

 

Visit Larry at: www.larrylafountain.com

 

 

 

To buy Blue Fingernails, click here:  http://www.powells.com/s?header=Search+Form&kw=Larry+La+Fountain

 

 

 

 To receive my weekly Thursday posts straight to your email, register here:  http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Latin@ Poetry Fierceness!

 

Ok…this week’s post is a little on the long side, but not a word of waste awaits you. At the end of May, I’ll be hosting the second Latino-themed PANIC! reading, HISPANIC PANIC! and the following poets will be among the six featured writers for that. One of the great things about living in New York is all the diversity within our numerous subcategories of social groups. The two poets I interviewed for this week’s post both live in New York, are of Nicaraguan heritage (or half) and have been performing spoken word poetry for a number of years. Ladies and gentleman, meet Karen Jaime and Cristina Izaguirre…(clap!)

KAREN JAIME

So tell us where you’re from, and why you became a poet and performer.

I am a Dominican-Nicaraguan poet/performance artist originally from Long Island and currently living in Washington Heights, since 1997. I was initially inspired to write by a class I took entitled “Poetry and Politics in the Americas”, as an undergrad at Cornell. The work we read in that class—Aloud!, Willie Perdomo, Sandre Dee Cervantes, Cristina Garcia, raulsalinas—made sense and helped me to understand a bit more about what it meant to be Latin@ in Ithaca, NY. I found myself in an environment that was very suffocating and not necessarily accepting of difference. In general, as students of color, we were constantly protesting one thing or another: for a Latino Living Center, against people defacing the work of Latino artists, against students writing stuff like “Niggers Go Home” on the side of the students of color office. That environment, that dynamic fed me as an artist and gave me wonderful material to draw from. I grew up very protected and insulated by my mom and Cornell just opened that up, I found a strong community there. I look back and realize that I was blessed to be surrounded by amazing artists—Junot Diaz, James De La Vega, Yasmin Hernandez, the Welfare Poets. It felt like we were constantly producing one artist or another and feeding off of that energy in order to create our work. It was us against THEM and our work reflected that.

 

 

 

How does your work fit into and/or defy the style that has come to be known as “Nuyorican”? Do you find this tag limiting and what do you see in the future for New York-based queer-oriented Latino poetry and performance?

Ah. THAT question, ha ha ha. Bueno, I see “Nuyorican” operating on more than one level. I think we, Latin@s, need to respect the particularity of that term and whom it refers to. It is an umbrella term and a specific term and I like to be really careful when using it—it’s important to remember not only its history and function, but the struggles of the people to whom the term originally referred to and to those it continues to refer to, ethnic Puerto Ricans and their descendants. I function as a “Nuyorican” artist in that my experience as a Latin@ is tied into the aesthetic and brand of the Nuyorican Poets Café. It’s my home in a lot of ways. It’s where I learned how to perform and it provided me with a venue where I could present my work and find folks that were not only willing to listen, but also to help me grow and become a better, more efficacious artist. I am also “Nuyorican” in terms of aesthetic practice—I perform with a recognizable style and cadence, although I work hard to not fall into the cliché of “Nuyorican” performance with gesticulations, planned pauses, affect for affect’s sake. It’s all premeditated and doesn’t leave room for the dialectic relationship between the performer and the audience. The sing-songy stuff wears on me and unfortunately it becomes synonymous with spoken word and slam poetry in ways that are really unfair, but I digress. I am also “Nuyorican” in the way in which it is a term currently used for performers with a political message, those who create a type of “outsider” art/poetry that now has become so co-modified, it’s mainstream so…pero bueno, I hope that answers this question. As for whether I find the term limiting, I think it could be, but I look at it, analyze and write about it in so many different ways, that it’s not. I work against the stereotype and the clichés—it provides me with a useful point of departure, although I can see how it could seem limiting.

In terms of the future of Latino-oriented, queer-based poetry and performance, I think it’s growing and definitely increasing in terms of visibility. It’s difficult for me to answer these types of questions since the poetry/performance circles I run in have always been very diverse in terms of homo-, hetero-, an “anything goes” type vibe. I can honestly say that I see tremendous creative growth coming out of the West Coast. One of my favorite artists, and a dear friend, Marga Gomez moved back to San Francisco a couple of years ago and deprived NYC of her presence and amazing work. We still have Carmelita Tropicana which makes me incredibly happy. I think we as Latin@s need to work together a bit more, increase our networking and support one another, which is why I’m really looking forward to this upcoming Hispanic PANIC! 2—it’s just great to connect with other Latin@s, queer ones at that, in a great space.

What drives you to write and perform?

I used to be driven by anger—if you questioned my ethnic authenticity, I wrote a poem, you annoyed me at work, I wrote a poem, and my work was ultimately a great deal more personal because of this. Now, I tend to write more from the perspective of political critique and commentary. It’s channeled anger to a certain extent and less personal. I enjoy performing and always have in different ways. Before I performed spoken word, I was a classical cellist from the age of twelve until my freshmyn year of college. I enjoy being on stage, I enjoy hosting—I hosted at the Nuyorican for three years and at other events at different colleges and universities. For me it’s a lot more than some self-indulgent, narcissistic endeavor, although it could easily be that. I feel as if I have a responsibility to increase the number of queer brown bodies on stage, any stage. It is important for our presence to be felt, for us to be there, in the mix. The more of us that people engage and interact with, the less people can say, “Oh, I have never been around anyone who’s gay or is that some gay shit?” Well, I am doing spoken word poetry for gays, straights, browns and even whites. I might piss people off, or I might have them nodding in agreement, but ultimately, they are all listening.

 

 

 

The Latino experience in the USA is often a marginalized one, and being queer within that marginalization is often yet another degree of removal from mainstream values. Do you find this to be an advantage, burden or both/neither and how does this inform your work?

Well, I see my identity as intersectional. I place my ethnicity and my sexuality and gender identity side by side and have them dance a little together without touching, so no one ends up leading. This is both an advantage—in that I’m able to look at the world from a very particular perspective, and a disadvantage—in that certain things are expected and assumed. In terms of my work, no, I’m not always going to read/perform an LGBT piece, or a Latin@ piece. That for me is not interesting. I hate being limited by identitarian politics. I have my ethnic pieces, my sexuality pieces, but most of my work includes these elements of me as very matter-of-fact, not as a constant performance of self. Ultimately, I’m a firm believer in what José E. Muñoz defines as “disidentification”: I do not completely remove myself from the mainstream and reject it, nor do I assimilate or take it all in, I take what is useful and necessary for survival.

 

 

 

Will you share a short piece with us?

“A Letter to Keith”*

Dear Keith:

I wanna be a slam poet. I wanna get-up on a Friday night and set people’s minds ablaze. Get them so fucked up they’ll think they just smoked some ‘dro mixed with ecstasy ’cause I am taking them to places only visited by those on transcendental, chemical trips.

You see, I wanna be a slam poet so I am trying to work on writing something that I can read really, really fast.

ThisWayNooneWillUnderstandItAndItsGottaBeGoodIfItsFast right? Only if its anything like sex, fast is not always better its just faster and usually only one person gets off while the others left there waiting for the real ride to begin.

So maybe I should re-think that and just start getting up here and start talking REALLY, REALLY LOUD so people will think I am really into it, when like an orgasm I could be faking it, so loud is not always good either.

So tell me Keith, what makes a slam poet?

A headwrap worn for effect?

An “ashe” at the end of my performance?

A cry for audience participation?

A soliloquy on police brutality?

or better yet a sex poem that talks about 1,001

to continue to perpetuate the objectification of a womyn’s body….

Let me know, ’cause I stand here

my journal in my hand

trying to write something

that will get me a “10″

that will make me a crowd pleaser as I do my jig up here

as I tap, tap, tap

to the tune of someone else’s idea of what a slam poet should be.

I don’t know Keith, tell me

’cause I am ready.

I wanna be a slam poet,

I got my dance shoes on,

my pen and paper in hand

and I’m ready to jig.

CRISTINA IZAGUIRRE

 

 

So tell us who you are, where you’re from, and why you became a poet and performer.

I was born in Managua, Nicaragua and immigrated with my parents to New York City when I was about six years old. Poetry has always been in my life. My mother says that when I was about three years old, I would sit by a window in our home in Nicaragua and spontaneously come up with poetry to the moon. I was lucky enough to go to a very progressive high school (Urban Academy) which offered a poetry class. So my first “performance” was for my peers in high school. I stopped writing for a long time, but after going through some difficult times in my life I realized that I needed to find an outlet. I needed to let go of all the “-isms” that are imposed on me and people like me. I found that poetry for me did not limit any of my multiple identities of Latina/immigrant/queer/woman/sister/daughter, etc. I began not only to write, but to speak and share my experience with others in my community. Poetry is a way to heal, not just for me, but to also bridge and build community with others who are having similar experiences.

 

 

How does your work fit into and/or defy the style that has come to be known as “Nuyorican”? Do you find this tag limiting and what do you see in the future for New York-based queer-oriented Latino poetry and performance?

 

I’m not sure that my style either “defies” or “fits” into the “Nuyorican” style. I can only say that I don’t consider myself a “slam poet” and although I admire the form, it isn’t what I do. I see myself somewhere in between performance poet and written word poet. I find it to be a hard balance sometimes. I am conscious of the fact that I will change my written word to sound better when it’s spoken. I often wonder if I am taking away from the written word because of this, at the same time I want people to connect and understand me when I perform a piece, so I’ll tailor it for that purpose.

 

 

What drives you to write and perform?

 

Survival. (and see answer to first question)

 

 

The Latino experience in the USA is often a marginalized one, and being queer within that marginalization is often yet another degree of removal from mainstream values. Do you find this to be an advantage, burden or both/neither and how does this inform your work?

 

My experience totally informs my work. I write about being teased in school for my accent, I write about seventeen-year-old Latino boys being stabbed on street corners, and I write about making love to women. Like I said before, poetry enables me to reflect outside what I feel inside, no one gives me voice, I give myself my own voice and this is empowering. I don’t have to be limited to just writing about being “Latino” or just being “queer” because I am all those things and much more. I think that’s the wonderful thing about art/poetry: you color and shape it the way you want.

 

 

Will you share a short piece with us?

 

 

 

 

We Leave the World Outside

 

Beneath my red, pink, yellow stripped sheets

trace your flushed

cheeks with my thumb

kiss the corners of your mouth

Leave the world outside

See outside in the world

our kind of love

is met with purple bruises

crimson splatter concrete, fists and broken teeth

bones split so easily

words shatter sternum

“Bitch! Dyke! Faggot!

You wanna be a man?

I’ll show you what a man is”

Inside, we mend love

suture muscle and flesh

using lips and tongue

“Saturate me” you say

I let the tears fall

heavy as sin

onto your collarbone

Leave the world outside

Lover, I fear

my skin and bones

aren’t steel

aren’t enough

to protect you

To risk a kiss on the Q train

to risk touching your face

on Ocean Avenue

before the change of a traffic light

to hold your lifeline in mine

At night I dream

the world is trying to get inside

underneath our sheets

onto our bodies

I wake up gasping for air

You pull me by my chin

Pull the red, pink, yellow stripped sheets

Over our heads

“Leave the world outside.”

-C. Izaguirre 2009

Cristina’s MySpace page can be viewed at: www.myspace.com/poetryarrived

See you all next week!

 

 

HISPANIC PANIC! 2 strikes on Wednesday, May 27–more on that soon.

 

 

 

To receive my weekly Thursday posts straight to your email, register here:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

mr. Pam on my ‘Entrapment’ Porn Debut

Thanks to all of the great readers who shared their stories at last night’s SHE-PANIC! reading at Nowhere. You were wonderful, all of you! I’m the luckiest man alive to be able to host such wonderful readings featuring such talented writers…mwa!

 

 

 

I’ll begin this week’s post by thanking “mr. Pam” at Lucas Entertainment for casting me in my first-ever porn flicker. I was so nervous in front of the camera I thought I would pee on myself (kinky, huh?), but Pam has a smooth, assuring style, and I did my scene in less than three takes (which you can view on the softcore trailer link below). Performance anxiety can be tough, as I learned in the past, as a musician and performer—and now as a writer who actively reads his work to strangers on a regular basis, which is kind of like being naked in front of glaring cameras.

 

 

All of this “entrapment” talk reminds me of the first time I went to Los Angeles, back in 1999. A friend took me to Beverly Hills, to Will Rogers Park, in fact—the “George Michael” bathroom, as it was known. Georgie has had so many media stunts since, that many have forgotten his public bathroom scandal, but I’ll never forget it. My first impression of the bathroom was that it was tiny—like eight-by-eight feet. When I first heard about the bust, I was humored by it all, but when I learned that the police officer tricked him, I was furious. And I’m not even a George Michael fan!

 

 

This brand of police entrapment has been happening in New York City DVD stores, with over 50 arrests since 2004. This is a war on gay sex, period. Straight people can pretty much screw around wherever and whenever they want to (parks, backseats, restrooms, which are all public)—and I’d kill to see the day they get busted and smeared for doing so, but I won’t hold my breath. If social welfare is the motive behind all of this silly “entrapment”, I say that we queers should wage a counteroffensive on child molestation, which plenty of straight men know a lot about. These fellows exact much more damage on society than the romps of drunk bar-queens in Eighth Avenue DVD stores will ever tally up.

 

 

The police claim that they receive complaints from people in the neighborhoods where these arrests are happening, and if this is true, people should think twice about moving to Chelsea, if the idea of gay sex bothers them. I can only hope that this is the last public flexing of homophobic muscles fueled by politicians and others whose own sexual inadequacies fuel their need to bust those who are having all the fun, (not to mention the closeted “edge thrill” of offering their “jewels” to another man). As rising unemployment and law enforcement budget cuts help to foster crime, you would think the police had better things to do.

 

So—mr. Pam—why this theme of gay entrapment by police for a Lucas Entertainment movie?

 

 

Well, I wrote Entrapment and co-directed it with my hot boss, Michael Lucas, after an email went out at work (Lucas Entertainment) about a panel discussion at the LGBT center, about porn stores being shut down. I was intrigued, plus I have an obvious interest in the porn stores staying open for my career, for the community, and as one of the last places where guys (and me occasionally) can still cruise. And to purchase DVDs of course! One speaker on the panel told his story about being “entrapped” by an undercover cop—he was arrested for loitering for the purpose of prostitution in an East Village porn shop.

 

 

Turns out a large number of gay men had also been offered sex by undercover police officers and then arrested. I was appalled! Forty years after the Stonewall Riots and blatant discrimination against the gay community and sexuality is still happening. I wanted to help the cause, but working 60+ hours a week doesn’t leave me much volunteer time. So I thought, why not use the media venues I have available and write a movie about the incident? What better way to help bring awareness to the cause, than by producing a movie that will be sold in the locations where the arrests are taking place? Plus I got to edit a really cool softcore awareness trailer that we posted on Youtube® (link below), that people can post on their blogs, social networking sites, etc. And there was your voiceover in the intro that was the finishing touch. Nice work darling!

 

 

It was my pleasure to read for you. I used to appear in all kinds of experimental film projects in my wilder days, so it felt natural. So were there any surprises along the way, in terms of production on Entrapment? You mentioned that you got really daring, in terms of shooting scenes in public, etc. Can you share without spoiling it for potential viewers?

 

 

 

My favorite scene to shoot was the “arrest”. We shot during rush hour on 8th Avenue, in Chelsea, in front of the Blue Store, which is one of the stores where such arrests have taken place. Ryan Raz and Vin Costas ran up to Dimitri Romanov and started yelling, reading him his rights, handcuffing him. Dimitri was screaming in Russian, it almost felt like an artsy porn demonstration in a way, causing lots of heads to turn. People were asking questions. It was awesome—and of course, a lot of really hot men having really hot sex, that’s always fun to shoot, too!

 

Were there any new models on this project that you look forward to working with again?

 

 

Well definitely our new exclusive, Dimitri Romanov. He’s taking English lessons, so I’m excited to get to know him better as his English improves, plus he taught me how to say “f**k you b***h in Russian. Fabulous! I was able to cast all my favorite boys in this movie, everyone was so easy to work with and fun. I can’t wait to shoot them all again!

 

 

 

So tell us more about this movie’s lineup of hunks.

Lots of hot men for this film. We’re introducing Lucas Entertainment’s newest exclusive, who I just mentioned, Dimitri Romanov, who just moved here from St. Petersburg Russia. We also have hotties Ryan Raz, who plays a cop, Lars Svenson who plays a cop/trainer, Kayl O’Riley (punk kid/cop-in-training), Vin Costas, Dimitri’s trick-turned-undercover cop, Trae Angle, Murphy Maxwell, Andrew James (a cop’s brother) and Isaiah Fox, who plays Andrew’s college boyfriend. All the guys are very sexy and were very excited to participate in a political porn movie. We shot great interviews with all the guys, after their scenes, talking about their experiences with being harassed for being gay, their thoughts on issues, etc. I’m very proud of the results.

 

 

 

What do you like about working in New York, as opposed to the West Coast, where most of the industry is located?

 

 

I had traveled here for work a ton over the past two years and started feeling the itch to move here. Michael Lucas popped the question last July, offering me a position as Creative Director of his company and I accepted. It’s a dream job I couldn’t pass up! Now I have lived in New York for six months. I guess the biggest challenge is having worked in San Francisco and Los Angeles for the past four years. I’m good friends with pretty much everyone from all the West Coast companies, having shot movies for them and/or interviewed them for the Tim and Roma Show. I guess you can say that there’s an East Coast/West Coast gay porn rivalry and a lot of times I feel stuck in the middle. I’m kind of sensitive. I just want everyone to be friends, because everyone is so awesome.

 

To view mr. pam’s Entrapment softcore trailer on Youtube®, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqhCGMm4j8Y

 

Entrapment can be purchased at: www.lucasentertainment.com

 

To view mr. pam’s body of work, as compiled by TLA, click here: http://www.tlavideo.com/person/3-0-67851_mr-pam.html?sn=1

 

Mr. Pam’s very own Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Pam

 

To receive my weekly Thursday posts straight to your email, register here:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez

 

Sweat and Lizards: Postcards from Borikén

Hello fellow cuckoo creatures and riley reptiles!

It’s back to the grind in New York City for me … for those of you who can make it, I’ll be hosting SHE-PANIC! at Nowhere on Wednesday, March 25th, 8PM, 21+. This reading will feature the daring, erotic stories and paranormal romance of divas Livia Llewellyn, Mure Vyn, Rosalind Christine Lloyd, Martha Garvey, Tiffany Lee Brown and Nora Robertson. Tiffany and Nora will be joining us from my one-time home, Portland, Oregon. The readers I’ve picked for this special evening hail from the New York City area, the Pacific Northwest and even Trinidad, so this will be a treat for sure…get your best claws out…

I’m settling back into my hectic life after spending eight magical days in Puerto Rico last week. What a treat that was, considering I’m of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage–but La Isla Del Encanto, as you’ll see, has surprises and charms for just about anyone and everyone. From the cosmopolitan shuffle of San Juan, to the mysterious bat-filled caves of Rio Camuy, Puerto Rico is an adventure and a thrill, to say the least.

John and I arrived in San Juan on Friday, March 6th, and immediately drove to the northwest corner of the island, where we were based, in Rincón, a surfer’s haven and the alleged area of one of Christopher Colombus’s landings (many towns claim this to their credit). A quick lunch of comidas criollas in Arecibo helped get our feet wet. Our quiet beachfront location afforded us much quiet time spent watching pelicans, chasing lizards, taking photos, eating, reading and writing. Below is a shot I caught of one of the nightly infernal sunsets, and the temperature at this time of year averaged about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

We spent the early part of the following week exploring the west coast, in cities and towns such as Mayagüez, Boquerón and Cabo Rojo, where we took in the local pirate lore, dodged four-foot iguanas crossing the highway, sunbathed and swam in blue-green waters. The food was incredible and the people even more so…we even tried to get to the Maricao State Forest but could not find Route 105 out of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico’s third largest city, and home to the best radio station EVER, Radio UTIL 1300 AM.

From the middle of the week through the end of our stay we hit the magnificent Rio Camuy caves (a must-see), stopping in charming Quebradillas for what might’ve been the best Puerto Rican food I’ve ever had (at Lucho’s), and believe me I’ve had a lot. We then visited the stunning, architectural time capsule town San Germán, the island’s second largest city, Ponce, the Tibes Taíno Ceremonial Center, and finished our trip with a day in glorious San Juan, where we went to El Morro and visited the Librería La Tertulia bookstore, which if you’re ever in San Juan and read in Spanish (they also have English titles), you should check out, at 305 Calle Recinto Sur (www.tertulia.com). Great reads! They even had a definitive Edgar Allan Poe collection translated into Spanish by Julio Cortázar. Who knew? I picked up an English volume, Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City (Markus Wiener, 2004), which was edited by Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Angelo Falcón and Félix Matos Rodríguez. I’m almost done with it if anyone would like to borrow it…

Hope you enjoyed the photos! More crazy, queer goodness to continue next week, when I’ll resume my usual blog (s)exploits with an interview with “mr. pam” of New York’s powerhouse pornography company, Lucas Entertainment. We’ll talk about the upcoming porno thriller Entrapment, which she cast me in…(seriously). My porno debut!

…spring is in the air darlings!

To receive my weekly Thursday posts straight to your email, register here:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=CharlieVazquez